Comments on: To thine own self be true

By: Chris (@LosTheSkald)

Chris (@LosTheSkald) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:40:08 +0000

Poster – I disagree. It’s Ironic even just within the context of the speech itself. Polonius has just spent x amount of time lecturing his son on exactly how to act and how not to act (a set of rules imposed externally), and then contradicts all of them with ‘to thine own self be true’. Certainly I’ve always read that speech as the kind of vacuous, platitudinous nonsense that fills self-help books now as it filled commonplace-books at the turn of the seventeenth century.

As to your last comment, I don’t think they necessarily teach that kind of hard determinism. Determinism is a part of tragedy, sure, but there’s no reason to see that it extrapolates out to a teaching on life, especially since Shakespeare also wrote comedies, and the last plays can been seen as a deliberate attempt to move beyond the ‘people continuing to be true to themselves’ model of tragedy. Prospero, in the Tempest, is convinced to change by Ariel, against the grain of his character up to that point – seems like Shakespeare wasn’t satisfied with the narrow expression of human motivation found in tragedy. Not to mention that Hamlet spends the whole of ‘Hamlet’ conflicted as to the nature of his ‘self’, and he dies because he *can’t* be true to himself (or even be sure he has a self to be true to), not because he is.

By: Poster

Poster — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:34:07 +0000

While I agree that Polonius is a bumbling fool, I disagree with the assertion that this quotation becomes ironic. If anything, everyone’s downfall in the play results from falling prey to their own desires and flaws. Sending spies to follow his son is being true to himself, even if “himself” isn’t admirable. Shakespeare’s tragedies teach us that people will continue to be true to themselves even when it becomes clear that being yourself is going to end badly. Rather than contradicting the statement, the play reaffirms it.

By: tasha

tasha — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:48:07 +0000

But . . . it was said by Polonius, one of the least impressive characters in all of Shakespeare. He, immediately after giving his son this advice, sends a spy to follow him and spread malicious rumors (i.e., lies) about him in an attempt to find out if his son is actually doing something wrong. Polonius himself spends a great deal of time being false to lots of men, lying and playing the politics of the court, and gets himself killed for it. The quotation, by the action of the play, becomes indelibly ironic.

I don’t know how anyone could have read the play, understood it, and still get this tattooed.